Miss-Delectable

Deafness fear for girl facing deportation | UK news | The Guardian

A toddler who underwent a series of operations to improve her hearing is facing a lifetime of total deafness after the Home Office refused her family permission to stay in the UK.

Fatima Chaw's hearing was damaged when she contracted meningitis a few weeks after she was born in Crawley, south London. Doctors at Great Ormond Street hospital decided to replace her inner ear with cochlear implants and her hearing has steadily improved.

But two weeks ago the Home Office turned down the parents' application to stay in the UK and three-year-old Fatima faces the prospect of growing up in the Gambia, where the family say the implants will quickly become useless.

"If she goes back she will lose everything," said her father, Sheriff Chaw. "[The implants] can fail at any time and if they do there is no way out for her ... she will be stuck with these machines in her head that don't work and there will be no one to help."

The hearing aids, which cost £15,000 each, need to be reprogrammed regularly and require continued support to ensure they function properly. They were inserted into Fatima's inner ear during two operations in 2006 and Chaw says his daughter's hearing and speech has improved dramatically.

"The implant is working very, very well now and she is happy," said Chaw. "She can hear sounds and she is beginning to hear her voice and the words are coming bit by bit ... like now she is saying daddy."

Both Chaw and his partner, Fatou Singhateh, said their daughter's progress would be under threat if the family were forced to return to the Gambia.

"It's disappointing because they have given her a chance and now they are taking it away - it will be a huge trauma for her to suddenly become deaf," said Chaw. "She's never been to the Gambia and doesn't even know there is a chance that she could be taken away from all this."

The couple arrived in the UK in 2002 to study banking. After Fatima was born in 2004, doctors wrote to the Home Office asking them to extend the couple's visas so their daughter could receive treatment to repair her hearing.

Singhateh, who completed her banking exams in December, said: "If we go back that means there is no use for the machines in the case where it breaks down. She will be completely deaf and there will be a machine inside her head that does not do anything."

The parents are planning to appeal but say they are not hopeful. "The trauma she will get when the implants stop working - I don't think she will cope with it," said Chaw. "This implant is for life and in that sort of region there is nothing like that. Even an ordinary hearing aid can be a problem to maintain."

He said that her daughter would also struggle without the support network of experts who have been working with her. "There is nothing like counsellors, speech and hearing therapists or teachers who can help ... she doesn't know that her whole world could be about to collapse."

Last night the Home Office said it did not comment on individual cases, adding: "We would not seek to remove anyone who has an application or review outstanding."

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